5 Alternative Metrics to Improve Performance Tracking

There are many metrics for tracking performance in business, so why do digital marketers tend to only track click-through rates? The answer: clicks are an easy metric to both track and understand, but it is only a general indication of interest from a consumer.

This isn’t to say that marketers shouldn’t track clicks, but there are many more key-performance indicators that tell a more in-depth story. Here are five alternative KPIs to track when looking at your digital marketing solution’s performance.

Metric 1: Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is the number of visitors who get to your site through using a search engine such as Google or Yahoo. Remember, the higher you rank in organic traffic, the higher you rank in search engines. Alternatively, direct traffic tells you how many visitors get to your page by typing in a URL or bookmarking your page.

Metric 2: Impressions

This is the number of times an ad has been served or displayed to a viewer. Impressions may not seem important, but this metric does a lot of the behind the scenes work to make sure that consumers know about and remember your brand.

Metric 3: Opt-In Registrations

Whether it be for an e-newsletter or a white paper, this is the number of people who have agreed to receive information from you.

Metric 4: Conversion Rate

The percentage of users that complete a desired action as defined by the advertiser. A conversion might include a purchase, an RSVP, a page view, or filling in a “contact us” form.

Metric 5: Unique Visitor Rate

This metric is the percentage of distinct people that visit your site within a specific period of time. This metric tracks the specific number of individuals, not how many times they visit your site. A return visitor rate would track the percentage of visitors that return to your site within a given time period. This indicates whether or not you are providing enough updated and valuable information for them to return.

There is a popular saying in business: “You aren’t doing what you aren’t tracking”. Start tracking your performance today, and start making informed and strategic decisions about your marketing solutions.